) although orange pigmented colony variants had already been isolated from dead larvae originating from AFB diseased colonies (Drobnikova et al., 1994). The two subspecies were also described to differ in their ability to produce acid from salicin and mannitol (Heyndrickx et al., 1996) although the fermentation of salicin and mannitol had been reported to be a rather variable characteristic of field strains of Paenibacillus larvae larvae